


Fall Out

by selkieskin



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Character Study, Drug Use, Dubious Morality, Dysfunctional Relationships, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internal Monologue, M/M, POV First Person, Pre-Reichenbach, Protectiveness, Recreational Drug Use, Trust, Unhealthy Relationships, mild homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-09 23:03:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2001348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selkieskin/pseuds/selkieskin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moran's always watched over Moriarty, but Moriarty's plans are coming to an end. He may not feel much, but he's grown sort of attached to the boss over all these years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fall Out

**Author's Note:**

> Dug this out from my old computer, so it was written just after Series 2 and is set just before The Reichenbach Fall.
> 
> Warning: some mild homophobic sentiments.

It wasn't that often that he let himself get like this. Not any more, anyway. Past fourteen, fifteen years maybe.

But this time, I think it had just got too much for him. It was a sign of how much he trusted in my... what was it they'd say in the movies, my 'unswerving loyalty' or some shite, that he let me see him like this at all. He knew that he had given me back my life, my true calling in a way I could never do again on a battlefield. I owed him my life. I owed him everything. He wielded that power over me, and I was grateful.

I suppose a reasonable person would ask me how I felt about doing the job I do, about how it feels to kill people I don't even know, but it's not really about that. Besides, better a good clean shot to the head than some amateur take my job and just cripple the poor bastards. That's how I see it. It's humane.

I suppose I've never been an entirely reasonable person. I don't like to think for myself, for one thing, that always creeped my mum out. Better I be given clear instructions, then I don't matter any more, I just follow them. It's not about myself, and that's how I like it. Once that decisions shit starts, there's no end to it. Let someone else deal with that. That's why I liked the army, and that's why I signed up as soon as I could and took in every skill, every little instruction they gave me, until they fucking kicked me out. Mindless cunts. Well, they got what was coming to them anyway. And that was enough to get me noticed by people who actually did give a fuck, who saw me for the machine I was and wanted to use me like I wanted to be used.

Which is why he always set me to watch him, to guard him as his eyes rolled into the back of his head and the hallucinations came. He knew I was nothing inside, that whatever he said was law. Whatever children's TV he had put on to accompany this trip flickered and blared, casting bright shadows over the walls of this all-but-empty room. I couldn't see what he was watching, from my position crouched by the door, but I could see his face, brown eyes wide, pupils blown, mouth hanging open, lips slightly apart. His expression. It made him look like something from a different planet. I always thought he needed to let this happen because he had to be fucking perfect at all other times, always so many steps ahead and out of harm's way, and he never let the mask slip. He was what he wanted to be. He was what everyone needed.

 

Whereas that Sherlock Holmes liked to space out on opiates, my boss preferred the cartoon stylings of LSD to forget the world to. It suited him better.

 

“Seb?” came a plaintive, high-pitched voice from the couch. It tugged at something deep inside me, somehow. He always called me Seb. At first I'd thought it was such an obnoxious-kid thing to do, call everyone by something short or a little nickname. I'd got used to it. “Seb, come here.” That plaintive voice got me deep down and tugged me right over to him.

So I went towards him. Closer then, when I saw his hand grasping, straining towards me from where he lay.

Dull flash of panic as I quickly dived on him and checked his mouth for vomit, sitting on the couch next to him and pulling his head up between my hands. But when I let him go, instead of pushing me away as he usually did, he grabbed my wrist, moving up even closer to me and I heard him breathing in my smell. His tiny hand – I always thought he had hands like a woman, proper manicured and everything – fisted in my t-shirt as he clung to me.

Something was seriously wrong this time. He often asked me to come closer to him, usually in a proper reasonable way, sometimes just to stand over him, sometimes asked me to hit him or say things to him, those fucking awful things, although I was smart enough to know to never leave a physical mark. I'd been in this business a long time for a reason. He never in all these years reached out to me like this. He never let himself feel vulnerable in public, so I think he stored it up for these sessions alone. Well, I say alone, he always needed a guard. But even then it was never allowed to touch him, beyond a kick or punch or at best, a touch on the shoulder. Our boss wasn't strong the way other people were strong, but he was powerful. He was more powerful than anyone. And he never let you forget that. He never let himself forget it, either.

Except for today. Why today?

I thought I had forgotten how to feel before I got close to him. Before that people were either targets, scenery or voices to be obeyed. He was the first person to make me feel I was worth something more than a hired gun. Not because I think he saw me as more than a cog in a process, I'm not thick, but because he changed something actually within me. Sure, he was a voice to be obeyed first and foremost, but for the first time in my life the voice was linked with someone. Besides, I never talk, and what I do say isn't all that nice, so people tend to steer clear. Not this one, though. He kept me around, so I stuck around. So now, years after I had started watching over him, night after night of these drug trips, the days when he was drawing up plans in his head and calling people in his cheeky little voice and even during the nights when he was simply asleep I realised I didn't want to lose him. That I tensed up whenever he took stupid risks. And whenever he couldn't deal with something, like now, I felt... well shit, I felt like I wanted to hold him. To protect him from whatever was hurting him, not let it fucking touch him. Tell him it was alright, that I could deal with whatever he needed me to deal with. Now don't get the wrong idea. It wasn't like he was a lover, it wasn't any of that sort of queer shite. I never had any kids, no wife or nothing, but this was... this is how I imagined a father might feel. He was a child, and he was upset, and before I could tell myself that this seemed a bit queer I had pulled him into my lap and had cocooned him in my arms.

Shut up. I know how it looked, I know how it sounds. I don't care. He felt right, there.

“It's all gonna end, Sebastian,” he said into my shirt, as if the words were being ripped from his throat, as if he was vomiting them out. “It's all over. Its all done. The end.”

He clutched at me like he was drowning. Shaking, desperate. Well, what could I do?

He emptied himself into my arms and I pulled him close and held him tight, too-tight maybe, and I shushed him and rocked him and held him there through the night. His tears on my chest, his snot on my coat. Just us, alone in that room, with the bright street-lamp orange streaming in through the window and god-knows-what, weird creatures bouncing around on the TV.

I'd never kissed a man before, but I pressed my lips to the top of his head as his breathing finally evened out once more. I knew he was awake, he never slept when on one of his trips. He knew what I meant.


End file.
